3-Step Drop: Rivalries

What a great weekend for college football fans coming up with the marquee games on the schedule.  Topping this list of rivalries and big games are USC v Notre Dame and OU v Texas.  What can your brand learn from these annual match ups?

1. Brands Need Brands - If your marketing agency has done a great job during the discovery and account planning process, your brand will be able to pioneer a new category free from competitors, initially.  But with today's resources and technology, some other company will copy you and come to market soon after you enter.  Do not worry, you want and need this to happen.  Why?  Think about it...how else would we be able to judge how good USC or Notre Dame is unless they play another team?  It would be ridiculous to crown Texas as national champions if they didn't play a game all year, right?

Your brand is the exact same.  If no competitors come into the market after you, the consumer will likely not give you the credibility you deserve.  Consumers need a way to gauge your brand against others to see just how good it really is; whether or not your "big idea" is as big as you think it is.  Past the initial phase of newness, consumers tend to think, "it must not be that good if nobody else is doing it."  You have a decided advantage when you enter this new market first, and you will have chances to "out play" your competition with better strategy, just as USC and Texas will this weekend.

2. Consumers Need Brands - You might be thinking this statement should be the other way around.  You would be correct; brands do need consumers.  But it is equally as true that consumers need and want good brands as well, for three main reasons.  The first being it saves time.  Assume your favorite college football team has a bye this weekend, will you not watch games at all?  Most likely not.  So how will you choose?  You will scan your TV Guide channel and look at the match ups.  Certain teams/universities have built brands over the long term that give you a sense of what to watch; OU v Texas being one of them.  Your brand is the same way.  Once you make a name for yourself, it will be easier to sell to the consumer because the consumer knows what they are getting.

The second reason is that brands project the right message to the people who will be judging you; and face it, we all judge.  Again, assume your favorite team has a bye this weekend and you choose to watch these two marquee match ups.  Let's say both of these games end up being one-sided blowouts.  Will anyone fault you for tuning in to these games, even if they become blowouts, instead of Central Seaweed State v. Northern Turkeyneck University?  No.  But if you tune into the Turkeyneck's game and OU v Texas is a close nail biter people will think you're nuts for not even tuning in at all.  Nobody will fault you for choosing those marquee match ups and you, as a consumer, don't lose any image points.

Lastly, and closely related to the second point is brands provide consumers with an identity.  Consumers need an identity just as much as brands do.  Being a fan of USC or OU aligns them with a group of like-minded people.  However they choose this association, for now, is irrelevant.  What is important is that consumers WILL choose things, groups, people, and/or products that will help people identify them and so they can identify themselves.  If you want to be seen as cool and hip, you might buy an iPhone.  When people see you with that iPhone they will think that you are an up-to-date, tech-savvy, cool person.

3. Brands Are Long Term Assets -  When we look at these games, today we see them as the big games of weekend.  But were they always that big?  No.  There was a time when OU v Texas only had meaning for people associated with those institutions.  Eventually overtime with the success of the teams and the national championship implications, this game itself became a brand, hence the name the Red River Rivalry, as well as the teams that play in them.  This did not happen overnight.  It took years on the recruiting trail for the coaches, countless wins, loses, championships, and marquee players to get this game noticed at the national level.  Now when someone mentions the Red River Rivalry we don't need to ask who's playing in that game.

Your brand will start small and may need years to prosper to the level where it is synonymous with a particular category.  It takes consistency, cash and an ability to cut through the competitive clutter.  Don't believe me?  Red Bull took nine years to exceed $100 million in annual sales.  It took Microsoft ten years to exceed that same amount.  How long did it take the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart (with approximately $339 billion in annual sales), to reach the $100 million mark? FOURTEEN YEARS!  Be patient and don't expect instant results with your brand either.  Eventually your brand can reach the heights of a USC, Notre Dame or the Red River Rivalry as well.  Fight On!